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You’ll notice that odd stone structure atop the Carpenter’s Shop when you first begin playingMudborne, but once you’ve found the loft key and gained access to the roof of your first home, your world opens up - quite literally! Use frogs with the right genetic code to activate what turns out to be a portal between worlds.
The warm-toned world between the waking and dream worlds is called the Gateway Nexus, and by unlocking different access points around the maps in Mudborne, you’ll be able to quickly fast travel between worlds instead of trekking back and forth between them.
Fast Travel With Gateway Nexus Portals
If you thoughtthe areas you’re exploringin the Spawning Pools and their dream iteration was a lot of walking, just wait until you open access to the remaining areas of the map in Mudborne! After you’veopened the Northern Pool, the game really opens up - you’ve got four new areas to explore from there, three distinct districts with the Kindergarten, Climate Control, and the Residential District all surrounding the Central Junction, which you gain acess to after opening the North Reflection Pool with Dendro.
However, you’ve likely already explored a bit of the option to allows you to quickly traverse between important areas in each map: the Gateway Nexus. Once you’veretrieved the Loft Keyfor Hopert by exploring the dream world and locating it within, he allows you to head up to theroof of the Carpenter’s Shopto look around, free to take or check out anything you find.
This is your first chance to actually interact with the mysterious stone archway up there. In clicking it, you’ll see that each archwayasks for three frogsin order to activate. No matter which Gateway Nexus portal you’re looking to activate, you’ll needa frog with specific traitsthat will be listed in the center slot on the Gateway Nexus portal menu, as well astwo of any kind of frog, with their geneticsnot playing much of a rolein the opening of the gate.
Be sure to bring a few high Amplitude frogs anytime you go into a new Ancient Gateway - you’ll usually have a switch to depress on the other side to keep easy access to that gate in the Nexus.
Every portal correlates to another portal inside of the Gateway Nexus, which you’ll notice ismuch smaller than the normal maps. Inside, you’ll find a variety of other gates, the majority of which will not be activated. you’re able to explore the area in the Gateway Nexus, learning a bit about things like lifts that are essential to the Kindergarten area, gain access to an additional home with its own storage, and evenexplore small satellite worldsthat help unravel what seems to be a massive mystery as to what happened to all theother frogs in Mudborne.
With the right frogsin place at any given Gateway Nexus portal, you’ll see them hop onto the stone arch, whichpermanently activates that portal in both worlds and the Gateway Nexus. You’ll notice when you open your map in any realm that these portals are noted for each area. Above the portals, you’ll see asmall symbolthat denotes where you’ll find acorrelating portal someplace elseon another map.
One of the first major shortcuts you can create with this is a quick path between the Central Junction and your house at the Carpenter’s Shop in the Spawning Pools where you begin the game. The Gateway Nexus portal just northeast of where Dendro sets up camp takes you to just north of the house in the Gateway Nexus, which is just a short hop across a few stepping stones from the portal that leads to the roof of the Carpenter’s Shop in the waking world.
